Jane Austen

Jane Austen (/ˈɒstɪn, ˈɔːstɪn/ OST-in, AW-

stin; 16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817)
was an English novelist known primarily
for her six novels, which implicitly
interpret, critique, and comment upon the
British landed gentry at the end of the 18th
century. Austen's plots often explore the
dependence of women on marriage for the
pursuit of favourable social standing and
economic security. Her works are an
implicit critique of the novels of sensibility
of the second half of the 18th century and
are part of the transition to 19th-century
literary realism.[2][b] Her deft use of social
commentary, realism and biting irony have
earned her acclaim among critics and
scholars.

The anonymously published Sense and

Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice
(1813), Mansfield Park (1814), and Emma
(1816), were a modest success but
brought her little fame in her lifetime. She
wrote two other novels—Northanger Abbey
and Persuasion, both published
posthumously in 1817—and began
another, eventually
Jane Austen
titled Sanditon, but
died before its
completion. She
also left behind
three volumes of
juvenile writings in Portrait, c. 1810[a]
manuscript, the Born 16
short epistolary December
1775
novel Lady Susan, Steventon
and the unfinished Rectory,
novel The Watsons. Hampshire,
England
Since her death Died 18 July
Austen's novels 1817
(aged 41)
have rarely been out
Winchester,
of print. A Hampshire,
England
significant transition
Resting Winchester
in her reputation place Cathedral,
occurred in 1833, Hampshire
when they were Period 1787–
republished in 1817
Richard Bentley's Relatives Family
Standard Novels and
ancestry
series (illustrated by
Signature
Ferdinand Pickering
and sold as a set).
They gradually
gained wide acclaim and popular
readership. In 1869, fifty-two years after
her death, her nephew's publication of A
Memoir of Jane Austen introduced a
compelling version of her writing career
and supposedly uneventful life to an eager
audience. Her work has inspired a large
number of critical essays and has been
included in many literary anthologies. Her
novels have also inspired many films,
including 1940's Pride and Prejudice,
1995's Sense and Sensibility and 2016's
Love & Friendship.

Biographical sources

Last page of letter from

Austen to her sister,
Cassandra, 11 June 1799
The scant biographical information about
Austen comes from her few surviving
letters and sketches her family members
wrote about her.[4] Only about 160 of the
approximately 3,000 letters Austen wrote
have survived and been published.
Cassandra Austen destroyed the bulk of
the letters she received from her sister,
burning or otherwise destroying them. She
wanted to ensure that the "younger nieces
did not read any of Jane's sometimes acid
or forthright comments on neighbours or
family members".[5] In the interest of
protecting reputations from Jane's
penchant for honesty and forthrightness,
Cassandra omitted details of illnesses,
unhappiness and anything she considered
unsavoury.[6] Important details about the
Austen family were elided by intention,
such as any mention of Austen's brother
George, whose undiagnosed
developmental challenges led the family to
send him away from home; the two
brothers sent away to the navy at an early
age; or wealthy Aunt Leigh-Perrot, arrested
and tried on charges of larceny.[7]

The first Austen biography was Henry

Thomas Austen's 1818 "Biographical
Notice". It appeared in a posthumous
edition of Northanger Abbey and included
extracts from two letters, against the
judgement of other family members.
Details of Austen's life continued to be
omitted or embellished in her nephew's A
Memoir of Jane Austen, published in 1869,
and in William and Richard Arthur Austen-
Leigh's biography Jane Austen: Her Life
and Letters, published in 1913, all of which
included additional letters.[8] Austen's
family and relatives built a legend of "good
quiet Aunt Jane", portraying her as a
woman in a happy domestic situation,
whose family was the mainstay of her life.
Modern biographers include details
excised from the letters and family
biographies, but the biographer Jan Fergus
writes that the challenge is to keep the
view balanced, not to present her
languishing in periods of deep
unhappiness as "an embittered,
disappointed woman trapped in a
thoroughly unpleasant family".[4]

Life

Family

Jane Austen was born in Steventon,

Hampshire, on 16 December 1775 in a
harsh winter. Her father wrote of her arrival
in a letter that her mother "certainly
expected to have been brought to bed a
month ago". He added that the newborn
infant was "a present plaything for Cassy
and a future companion".[9] The winter of
1776 was particularly harsh and it was not
until 5 April that she was baptised at the
local church with the single name Jane.[9]

Church of St Nicholas in Steventon, as

depicted in A Memoir of Jane Austen[10]

George Austen (1731–1805), served as

the rector of the Anglican parishes of
Steventon and Deane.[11][c] The Reverend
Austen came from an old and wealthy
family of wool merchants. As each
generation of eldest sons received
inheritances, the wealth was divided, and
George's branch of the family fell into
poverty. He and his two sisters were
orphaned as children, and had to be taken
in by relatives. In 1745, at the age of
fifteen, George Austen's sister Philadelphia
was apprenticed to a milliner in Covent
Garden.[13] At the age of sixteen, George
entered St John's College, Oxford,[14]
where he most likely met Cassandra Leigh
(1739–1827).[15] She came from the
prominent Leigh family (originally of
Shropshire and based at Stonleigh,
Warwickshire since the later 16th
century[16][17][18]). Her father was rector at
All Souls College, Oxford, where she grew
up among the gentry. Her eldest brother
James inherited a fortune and large estate
from his great-aunt Perrot, with the only
condition that he change his name to
Leigh-Perrot.[19]

George Austen and Cassandra Leigh were

engaged, probably around 1763, when they
exchanged miniatures.[20] He received the
living of the Steventon parish from
Thomas Knight, the wealthy husband of
his second cousin.[21] They married on 26
April 1764 at St Swithin's Church in Bath,
by license, in a simple ceremony, two
months after Cassandra's father died.[22]
Their income was modest, with George's
small per annum living; Cassandra brought
to the marriage the expectation of a small
inheritance at the time of her mother's
death.[23]

The Austens took up temporary residence

at the nearby Deane rectory until
Steventon, a 16th-century house in
disrepair, underwent necessary
renovations. Cassandra gave birth to three
children while living at Deane: James in
1765, George in 1766, and Edward in
1767.[24] Her custom was to keep an infant
at home for several months and then place
it with Elizabeth Littlewood, a woman
living nearby to nurse and raise for twelve
to eighteen months.[25]
Steventon

Steventon parsonage, as depicted in

A Memoir of Jane Austen, was in a
valley and surrounded by
meadows.[10]

In 1768, the family finally took up

residence in Steventon. Henry was the first
child to be born there, in 1771.[26] At about
this time, Cassandra could no longer
ignore the signs that little George was
developmentally disabled. He was subject
to seizures, may have been deaf and mute,
and she chose to send him out to be
fostered.[27] In 1773, Cassandra was born,
followed by Francis in 1774, and Jane in
1775.[28]

According to Professor of Literature Park

Honan, the atmosphere of the Austen
home was an "open, amused, easy
intellectual" one, where the ideas of those
with whom the Austens might disagree
politically or socially were considered and
discussed.[29]

The family relied on the patronage of their

kin and hosted visits from numerous
family members.[30] Mrs Austen spent the
summer of 1770 in London with George's
sister, Philadelphia, and her daughter Eliza,
accompanied by his other sister, Mrs
Walter and her daughter Philly.[31][d]
Philadelphia and Eliza Hancock were,
according to Le Faye, "the bright comets
flashing into an otherwise placid solar
system of clerical life in rural Hampshire,
and the news of their foreign travels and
fashionable London life, together with their
sudden descents upon the Steventon
household in between times, all helped to
widen Jane's youthful horizon and
influence her later life and works."[32]

Cassandra Austen's cousin Thomas Leigh

visited a number of times in the 1770s and
1780s, inviting young Cassie to visit them
in Bath in 1781. The first mention of Jane
occurs in family documents upon her
return, "... and almost home they were
when they met Jane & Charles, the two
little ones of the family, who had to go as
far as New Down to meet the chaise, &
have the pleasure of riding home in it."[33]
Le Faye writes that "Mr Austen's
predictions for his younger daughter were
fully justified. Never were sisters more to
each other than Cassandra and Jane;
while in a particularly affectionate family,
there seems to have been a special link
between Cassandra and Edward on the
one hand, and between Henry and Jane on
the other."[34]
From 1773 until 1796, George Austen
supplemented his income by farming and
by teaching three or four boys at a time,
who boarded at his home.[35] The
Reverend Austen had an annual income of
£200 (equivalent to £27,000 in 2021) from
his two livings.[36] This was a very modest
income at the time; by comparison, a
skilled worker like a blacksmith or a
carpenter could make about £100 annually
while the typical annual income of a gentry
family was between £1,000 and £5,000.[36]
Mr. Austen also rented the 200-acre
Cheesedown farm from his benefactor
Thomas Knight which could make a profit
of £300 (equivalent to £41,000 in 2021) a
year.[37]

During this period of her life, Jane Austen

attended church regularly, socialised with
friends and neighbours,[e] and read novels
—often of her own composition—aloud to
her family in the evenings. Socialising with
the neighbours often meant dancing,
either impromptu in someone's home after
supper or at the balls held regularly at the
assembly rooms in the town hall.[38] Her
brother Henry later said that "Jane was
fond of dancing, and excelled in it".[39]
Education

Silhouette of Cassandra Austen,

Jane's sister and closest friend

In 1783, Austen and her sister Cassandra

were sent to Oxford to be educated by Mrs
Ann Cawley who took them to
Southampton later that year. That autumn
both girls were sent home after catching
typhus, from which Jane Austen nearly
died.[40] She was from then home
educated, until she attended boarding
school with her sister from early in 1785 at
the Reading Abbey Girls' School, ruled by
Mrs La Tournelle.[41] The curriculum
probably included French, spelling,
needlework, dancing, music and drama.
The sisters returned home before
December 1786 because the school fees
for the two girls were too high for the
Austen family.[42] After 1786, Austen
"never again lived anywhere beyond the
bounds of her immediate family
environment".[43]

Her education came from reading, guided

by her father and brothers James and
Henry.[44] Irene Collins said that Austen
"used some of the same school books as
the boys".[45] Austen apparently had
unfettered access both to her father's
library and that of a family friend, Warren
Hastings. Together these collections
amounted to a large and varied library. Her
father was also tolerant of Austen's
sometimes risqué experiments in writing,
and provided both sisters with expensive
paper and other materials for their writing
and drawing.[46]

Private theatricals were an essential part

of Austen's education. From her early
childhood, the family and friends staged a
series of plays in the rectory barn,
including Richard Sheridan's The Rivals
(1775) and David Garrick's Bon Ton.
Austen's eldest brother James wrote the
prologues and epilogues and she probably
joined in these activities, first as a
spectator and later as a participant.[47]
Most of the plays were comedies, which
suggests how Austen's satirical gifts were
cultivated.[48] At the age of 12, she tried
her own hand at dramatic writing; she
wrote three short plays during her teenage
years.[49]
Juvenilia (1787–1793)

From at least the time she was aged

eleven, Austen wrote poems and stories to
amuse herself and her family.[50] She
exaggerated mundane details of daily life
and parodied common plot devices in
"stories [] full of anarchic fantasies of
female power, licence, illicit behaviour, and
general high spirits", according to Janet
Todd.[51] Containing work written between
1787 and 1793, Austen compiled fair
copies of twenty-nine early works into
three bound notebooks, now referred to as
the Juvenilia.[52] She called the three
notebooks "Volume the First", "Volume the
Second" and "Volume the Third", and they
preserve 90,000 words she wrote during
those years.[53] The Juvenilia are often,
according to scholar Richard Jenkyns,
"boisterous" and "anarchic"; he compares
them to the work of 18th-century novelist
Laurence Sterne.[54]

Portrait of Henry IV. Declaredly written

by "a partial, prejudiced, & ignorant
Historian", The History of England was
illustrated by Austen's sister,
Cassandra (c. 1790).

Among these works is a satirical novel in

letters titled Love and Freindship [sic],
written when aged fourteen in 1790,[55] in
which she mocked popular novels of
sensibility.[56] The next year, she wrote The
History of England, a manuscript of thirty-
four pages accompanied by thirteen
watercolour miniatures by her sister,
Cassandra. Austen's History parodied
popular historical writing, particularly
Oliver Goldsmith's History of England
(1764).[57] Honan speculates that not long
after writing Love and Freindship, Austen
decided to "write for profit, to make stories
her central effort", that is, to become a
professional writer. When she was around
eighteen years old, Austen began to write
longer, more sophisticated works.[58]
In August 1792, aged seventeen, Austen
started Catharine or the Bower, which
presaged her mature work, especially
Northanger Abbey, but was left unfinished
until picked up in Lady Susan, which Todd
describes as less prefiguring than
Catharine.[59] A year later she began, but
abandoned, a short play, later titled Sir
Charles Grandison or the happy Man, a
comedy in 6 acts, which she returned to
and completed around 1800. This was a
short parody of various school textbook
abridgements of Austen's favourite
contemporary novel, The History of Sir
Charles Grandison (1753), by Samuel
Richardson.[60]
When Austen
External videos
became an aunt for
Presentation by
the first time aged
Claire Tomalin on
eighteen, she sent
Jane Austen: A Life,
new-born niece
23 November 1997
Fanny-Catherine (https://www.c-spa
Austen-Knight "five n.org/video/?95776-
short pieces of ... 1/jane-austen-life) ,
the Juvenilia now C-SPAN
known collectively
as 'Scraps' .., purporting to be her
'Opinions and Admonitions on the conduct
of Young Women' ". For Jane-Anna-
Elizabeth Austen (also born in 1793), her
aunt wrote "two more 'Miscellanious [sic]
Morsels', dedicating them to [Anna] on 2
June 1793, 'convinced that if you seriously
attend to them, You will derive from them
very important Instructions, with regard to
your Conduct in Life.' "[61] There is
manuscript evidence that Austen
continued to work on these pieces as late
as 1811 (when she was 36), and that her
niece and nephew, Anna and James
Edward Austen, made further additions as
late as 1814.[62]

Between 1793 and 1795 (aged eighteen to

twenty), Austen wrote Lady Susan, a short
epistolary novel, usually described as her
most ambitious and sophisticated early
work.[63] It is unlike any of Austen's other
works. Austen biographer Claire Tomalin
describes the novella's heroine as a sexual
predator who uses her intelligence and
charm to manipulate, betray and abuse her
lovers, friends and family. Tomalin writes:

Told in letters, it is as neatly

plotted as a play, and as cynical
in tone as any of the most
outrageous of the Restoration
dramatists who may have
provided some of her
inspiration ... It stands alone in
Austen's work as a study of an
adult woman whose intelligence
 and force of character are
greater than those of anyone she
encounters.[64]

According to Janet Todd, the model for the

title character may have been Eliza de
Feuillide, who inspired Austen with stories
of her glamorous life and various
adventures. Eliza's French husband was
guillotined in 1794; she married Jane's
brother Henry Austen in 1797.[30]
Tom Lefroy

Thomas Langlois Lefroy, Lord Chief

Justice of Ireland, by W. H. Mote
(1855); in old age, Lefroy admitted
that he had been in love with Austen:
"It was boyish love."[65]

When Austen was twenty, Tom Lefroy, a

neighbour, visited Steventon from
December 1795 to January 1796. He had
just finished a university degree and was
moving to London for training as a
barrister. Lefroy and Austen would have
been introduced at a ball or other
neighbourhood social gathering, and it is
clear from Austen's letters to Cassandra
that they spent considerable time together:
"I am almost afraid to tell you how my Irish
friend and I behaved. Imagine to yourself
everything most profligate and shocking in
the way of dancing and sitting down
together."[66]

Austen wrote in her first surviving letter to

her sister Cassandra that Lefroy was a
"very gentlemanlike, good-looking,
pleasant young man".[67] Five days later in
another letter, Austen wrote that she
expected an "offer" from her "friend" and
that "I shall refuse him, however, unless he
promises to give away his white coat",
going on to write "I will confide myself in
the future to Mr Tom Lefroy, for whom I
don't give a sixpence" and refuse all
others.[67] The next day, Austen wrote: "The
day will come on which I flirt my last with
Tom Lefroy and when you receive this it
will be all over. My tears flow as I write at
this melancholy idea".[67]

Halperin cautioned that Austen often

satirised popular sentimental romantic
fiction in her letters, and some of the
statements about Lefroy may have been
ironic. However, it is clear that Austen was
genuinely attracted to Lefroy and
subsequently none of her other suitors
ever quite measured up to him.[67] The
Lefroy family intervened and sent him
away at the end of January. Marriage was
impractical as both Lefroy and Austen
must have known. Neither had any money,
and he was dependent on a great-uncle in
Ireland to finance his education and
establish his legal career. If Tom Lefroy
later visited Hampshire, he was carefully
kept away from the Austens, and Jane
Austen never saw him again.[68] In
November 1798, Lefroy was still on
Austen's mind as she wrote to her sister
she had tea with one of his relatives,
wanted desperately to ask about him, but
could not bring herself to raise the
subject.[69]

Early manuscripts (1796–1798)

After finishing Lady Susan, Austen began

her first full-length novel Elinor and
Marianne. Her sister remembered that it
was read to the family "before 1796" and
was told through a series of letters.
Without surviving original manuscripts,
there is no way to know how much of the
original draft survived in the novel
published anonymously in 1811 as Sense
and Sensibility.[70]
Austen began a second novel, First
Impressions (later published as Pride and
Prejudice), in 1796. She completed the
initial draft in August 1797, aged 21; as
with all of her novels, Austen read the work
aloud to her family as she was working on
it and it became an "established
favourite".[71] At this time, her father made
the first attempt to publish one of her
novels. In November 1797, George Austen
wrote to Thomas Cadell, an established
publisher in London, to ask if he would
consider publishing First Impressions.
Cadell returned Mr. Austen's letter, marking
it "Declined by Return of Post". Austen may
not have known of her father's efforts.[72]
Following the completion of First
Impressions, Austen returned to Elinor and
Marianne and from November 1797 until
mid-1798, revised it heavily; she eliminated
the epistolary format in favour of third-
person narration and produced something
close to Sense and Sensibility.[73] In 1797,
Austen met her cousin (and future sister-
in-law), Eliza de Feuillide, a French
aristocrat whose first husband the Comte
de Feuillide had been guillotined, causing
her to flee to Britain, where she married
Henry Austen.[74] The description of the
execution of the Comte de Feuillide related
by his widow left Austen with an intense
horror of the French Revolution that lasted
for the rest of her life.[74]

During the middle of 1798, after finishing

revisions of Elinor and Marianne, Austen
began writing a third novel with the
working title Susan—later Northanger
Abbey—a satire on the popular Gothic
novel.[75] Austen completed her work
about a year later. In early 1803, Henry
Austen offered Susan to Benjamin Crosby,
a London publisher, who paid £10 for the
copyright. Crosby promised early
publication and went so far as to advertise
the book publicly as being "in the press",
but did nothing more.[76] The manuscript
remained in Crosby's hands, unpublished,
until Austen repurchased the copyright
from him in 1816.[77]

Bath and Southampton

Austen's house, 4 Sydney

Place, Bath, Somerset

In December 1800, George Austen

unexpectedly announced his decision to
retire from the ministry, leave Steventon,
and move the family to 4, Sydney Place in
Bath, Somerset.[78] While retirement and
travel were good for the elder Austens,
Jane Austen was shocked to be told she
was moving 50 miles (80 km) away from
the only home she had ever known.[79] An
indication of her state of mind is her lack
of productivity as a writer during the time
she lived in Bath. She was able to make
some revisions to Susan, and she began
and then abandoned a new novel, The
Watsons, but there was nothing like the
productivity of the years 1795–1799.[80]
Tomalin suggests this reflects a deep
depression disabling her as a writer, but
Honan disagrees, arguing Austen wrote or
revised her manuscripts throughout her
creative life, except for a few months after
her father died.[81][f] It is often claimed that
Austen was unhappy in Bath, which
caused her to lose interest in writing, but it
is just as possible that Austen's social life
in Bath prevented her from spending much
time writing novels.[82] The critic Robert
Irvine argued that if Austen spent more
time writing novels when she was in the
countryside, it might just have been
because she had more spare time as
opposed to being more happy in the
countryside as is often argued.[82]
Furthermore, Austen frequently both
moved and travelled over southern
England during this period, which was
hardly a conducive environment for writing
a long novel.[82] Austen sold the rights to
publish Susan to a publisher Crosby &
Company, who paid her £10 (equivalent to
£860 in 2021).[83] The Crosby & Company
advertised Susan, but never published
it.[83]

Austen was a regular visitor to her brother

Edward's home, Godmersham Park in Kent,
between 1798 and 1813. The house is
regarded as an influence on her works.[84]

The years from 1801 to 1804 are

something of a blank space for Austen
scholars as Cassandra destroyed all of her
letters from her sister in this period for
unknown reasons.[85] In December 1802,
Austen received her only known proposal
of marriage. She and her sister visited
Alethea and Catherine Bigg, old friends
who lived near Basingstoke. Their younger
brother, Harris Bigg-Wither, had recently
finished his education at Oxford and was
also at home. Bigg-Wither proposed and
Austen accepted. As described by Caroline
Austen, Jane's niece, and Reginald Bigg-
Wither, a descendant, Harris was not
attractive—he was a large, plain-looking
man who spoke little, stuttered when he
did speak, was aggressive in conversation,
and almost completely tactless. However,
Austen had known him since both were
young and the marriage offered many
practical advantages to Austen and her
family. He was the heir to extensive family
estates located in the area where the
sisters had grown up. With these
resources, Austen could provide her
parents a comfortable old age, give
Cassandra a permanent home and,
perhaps, assist her brothers in their
careers. By the next morning, Austen
realised she had made a mistake and
withdrew her acceptance.[86] No
contemporary letters or diaries describe
how Austen felt about this proposal.[87]
Irvine described Bigg-Wither as somebody
who "...seems to have been a man very
hard to like, let alone love".[88]

In 1814, Austen wrote a letter to her niece

Fanny Knight, who had asked for advice
about a serious relationship, telling her
that "having written so much on one side
of the question, I shall now turn around &
entreat you not to commit yourself farther,
& not to think of accepting him unless you
really do like him. Anything is to be
preferred or endured rather than marrying
without Affection".[89] The English scholar
Douglas Bush wrote that Austen had "had
a very high ideal of the love that should
unite a husband and wife ... All of her
heroines ... know in proportion to their
maturity, the meaning of ardent love".[90] A
possible autobiographical element in
Sense and Sensibility occurs when Elinor
Dashwood contemplates "the worse and
most irremediable of all evils, a connection
for life" with an unsuitable man.[90][g]

Watercolour of Jane Austen by her

sister, Cassandra, 1804.[91]

In 1804, while living in Bath, Austen

started, but did not complete, her novel
The Watsons. The story centres on an
invalid and impoverished clergyman and
his four unmarried daughters. Sutherland
describes the novel as "a study in the
harsh economic realities of dependent
women's lives".[92] Honan suggests, and
Tomalin agrees, that Austen chose to stop
work on the novel after her father died on
21 January 1805 and her personal
circumstances resembled those of her
characters too closely for her comfort.[93]

Her father's relatively sudden death left

Jane, Cassandra, and their mother in a
precarious financial situation. Edward,
James, Henry, and Francis Austen (known
as Frank) pledged to make annual
contributions to support their mother and
sisters.[94] For the next four years, the
family's living arrangements reflected their
financial insecurity. They spent part of the
time in rented quarters in Bath before
leaving the city in June 1805 for a family
visit to Steventon and Godmersham. They
moved for the autumn months to the
newly fashionable seaside resort of
Worthing, on the Sussex coast, where they
resided at Stanford Cottage.[h] It was here
that Austen is thought to have written her
fair copy of Lady Susan and added its
"Conclusion". In 1806, the family moved to
Southampton, where they shared a house
with Frank Austen and his new wife. A
large part of this time they spent visiting
various branches of the family.[95]

On 5 April 1809, about three months

before the family's move to Chawton,
Austen wrote an angry letter to Richard
Crosby, offering him a new manuscript of
Susan if needed to secure the immediate
publication of the novel, and requesting
the return of the original so she could find
another publisher. Crosby replied that he
had not agreed to publish the book by any
particular time, or at all, and that Austen
could repurchase the manuscript for the
£10 he had paid her and find another
publisher. She did not have the resources
to buy the copyright back at that time,[96]
but was able to purchase it in 1816.[97]

Chawton

Cottage in Chawton, Hampshire where

Austen lived during her last eight years of
life, now Jane Austen's House Museum

Around early 1809, Austen's brother

Edward offered his mother and sisters a
more settled life—the use of a large
cottage in Chawton village[i] which was
part of the estate around Edward's nearby
property Chawton House. Jane, Cassandra
and their mother moved into Chawton
cottage on 7 July 1809.[99] Life was quieter
in Chawton than it had been since the
family's move to Bath in 1800. The
Austens did not socialise with gentry and
entertained only when family visited. Her
niece Anna described the family's life in
Chawton as "a very quiet life, according to
our ideas, but they were great readers, and
besides the housekeeping our aunts
occupied themselves in working with the
poor and in teaching some girl or boy to
read or write."[100]
Published author
Like many women authors at the time,
Austen published her books
anonymously.[101] At the time, the ideal
roles for a woman were as wife and
mother, and writing for women was
regarded at best as a secondary form of
activity; a woman who wished to be a full-
time writer was felt to be degrading her
femininity, so books by women were
usually published anonymously in order to
maintain the conceit that the female writer
was only publishing as a sort of part-time
job, and was not seeking to become a
"literary lioness" (i.e. a celebrity).[102]
During her time at Chawton, Austen
published four generally well-received
novels. Through her brother Henry, the
publisher Thomas Egerton agreed to
publish Sense and Sensibility, which, like all
of Austen's novels except Pride and
Prejudice, was published "on commission",
that is, at the author's financial risk. When
publishing on commission, publishers
would advance the costs of publication,
repay themselves as books were sold and
then charge a 10% commission for each
book sold, paying the rest to the author. If
a novel did not recover its costs through
sales, the author was responsible for
them.[103] The alternative to selling via
commission was by selling the copyright,
where an author received a one-time
payment from the publisher for the
manuscript, which occurred with Pride and
Prejudice.[104] Austen's experience with
Susan (the manuscript that became
Northanger Abbey) where she sold the
copyright to the publisher Crosby & Sons
for £10, who did not publish the book,
forcing her to buy back the copyright in
order to get her work published, left
Austen leery of this method of
publishing.[101] The final alternative, of
selling by subscription, where a group of
people would agree to buy a book in
advance, was not an option for Austen as
only authors who were well known or had
an influential aristocratic patron who
would recommend an up-coming book to
their friends, could sell by subscription.[104]
Sense and Sensibility appeared in October
1811, and was described as being written
"By a Lady".[101] As it was sold on
commission, Egerton used expensive
paper and set the price at 15 shillings
(equivalent to £58 in 2021).[101]
 First edition title page from
Sense and Sensibility, Austen's
first published novel (1811)

Reviews were favourable and the novel

became fashionable among young
aristocratic opinion-makers;[105] the edition
sold out by mid-1813. Austen's novels
were published in larger editions than was
normal for this period. The small size of
the novel-reading public and the large
costs associated with hand production
(particularly the cost of handmade paper)
meant that most novels were published in
editions of 500 copies or fewer to reduce
the risks to the publisher and the novelist.
Even some of the most successful titles
during this period were issued in editions
of not more than 750 or 800 copies and
later reprinted if demand continued.
Austen's novels were published in larger
editions, ranging from about 750 copies of
Sense and Sensibility to about 2,000 copies
of Emma. It is not clear whether the
decision to print more copies than usual of
Austen's novels was driven by the
publishers or the author. Since all but one
of Austen's books were originally
published "on commission", the risks of
overproduction were largely hers (or
Cassandra's after her death) and
publishers may have been more willing to
produce larger editions than was normal
practice when their own funds were at risk.
Editions of popular works of non-fiction
were often much larger.[106]

Austen made £140 (equivalent to £10,800

in 2021) from Sense and Sensibility,[107]
which provided her with some financial
and psychological independence.[108] After
the success of Sense and Sensibility, all of
Austen's subsequent books were billed as
written "By the author of Sense and
Sensibility" and Austen's name never
appeared on her books during her
lifetime.[101] Egerton then published Pride
and Prejudice, a revision of First
Impressions, in January 1813. Austen sold
the copyright to Pride and Prejudice to
Egerton for £110 (equivalent to £7,600 in
2021).[101] To maximise profits, he used
cheap paper and set the price at 18
shillings (equivalent to £62 in 2021).[101]
He advertised the book widely and it was
an immediate success, garnering three
favourable reviews and selling well. Had
Austen sold Pride and Prejudice on
commission, she would have made a profit
of £475, or twice her father's annual
income.[101] By October 1813, Egerton was
able to begin selling a second edition.[109]
Mansfield Park was published by Egerton
in May 1814. While Mansfield Park was
ignored by reviewers, it was very popular
with readers. All copies were sold within
six months, and Austen's earnings on this
novel were larger than for any of her other
novels.[110]

Without Austen's knowledge or approval,

her novels were translated into French and
published in cheaply produced, pirated
editions in France.[111]: 1–2 The literary
critic Noel King commented in 1953 that,
given the prevailing rage in France at the
time for lush romantic fantasies, it was
remarkable that her novels with the
emphasis on everyday English life had any
sort of a market in France.[111]: 2 King
cautioned that Austen's chief translator in
France, Madame Isabelle de Montolieu,
had only the most rudimentary knowledge
of English, and her translations were more
of "imitations" than translations proper, as
Montolieu depended upon assistants to
provide a summary, which she then
translated into an embellished French that
often radically altered Austen's plots and
characters.[111]: 5–6 The first of the Austen
novels to be published that credited her as
the author was in France, when Persuasion
was published in 1821 as La Famille Elliot
ou L'Ancienne Inclination.[111]: 5

Austen learned that the Prince Regent

admired her novels and kept a set at each
of his residences.[j] In November 1815, the
Prince Regent's librarian James Stanier
Clarke invited Austen to visit the Prince's
London residence and hinted Austen
should dedicate the forthcoming Emma to
the Prince. Though Austen disapproved of
the Prince Regent, she could scarcely
refuse the request.[113] Austen
disapproved of the Prince Regent on the
account of his womanising, gambling,
drinking, spendthrift ways and generally
disreputable behaviour.[114] She later wrote
Plan of a Novel, according to Hints from
Various Quarters, a satiric outline of the
"perfect novel" based on the librarian's
many suggestions for a future Austen
novel.[115] Austen was greatly annoyed by
Clarke's often pompous literary advice, and
the Plan of a Novel parodying Clarke was
intended as her revenge for all of the
unwanted letters she had received from
the royal librarian.[114]

In mid-1815 Austen moved her work from

Egerton to John Murray, a better known
London publisher,[k] who published Emma
in December 1815 and a second edition of
Mansfield Park in February 1816. Emma
sold well, but the new edition of Mansfield
Park did poorly, and this failure offset most
of the income from Emma. These were the
last of Austen's novels to be published
during her lifetime.[117]

While Murray prepared Emma for

publication, Austen began The Elliots, later
published as Persuasion. She completed
her first draft in July 1816. In addition,
shortly after the publication of Emma,
Henry Austen repurchased the copyright
for Susan from Crosby. Austen was forced
to postpone publishing either of these
completed novels by family financial
troubles. Henry Austen's bank failed in
March 1816, depriving him of all of his
assets, leaving him deeply in debt and
costing Edward, James, and Frank Austen
large sums. Henry and Frank could no
longer afford the contributions they had
made to support their mother and
sisters.[118]

Illness and death

8 College Street in
Winchester where Austen
lived her last days and died.
Austen was feeling unwell by early 1816,
but ignored the warning signs. By the
middle of that year, her decline was
unmistakable, and she began a slow,
irregular deterioration.[119] The majority of
biographers rely on Zachary Cope's 1964
retrospective diagnosis and list her cause
of death as Addison's disease, although
her final illness has also been described as
resulting from Hodgkin's lymphoma.[120][l]
When her uncle died and left his entire
fortune to his wife, effectively disinheriting
his relatives, she suffered a relapse,
writing: "I am ashamed to say that the
shock of my Uncle's Will brought on a
relapse ... but a weak Body must excuse
weak Nerves."[122]

Austen continued to work in spite of her

illness. Dissatisfied with the ending of The
Elliots, she rewrote the final two chapters,
which she finished on 6 August 1816.[m] In
January 1817, Austen began The Brothers
(titled Sanditon when published in 1925),
completing twelve chapters before
stopping work in mid-March 1817,
probably due to illness.[124] Todd describes
Sanditon's heroine, Diana Parker, as an
"energetic invalid". In the novel Austen
mocked hypochondriacs, and although she
describes the heroine as "bilious", five
days after abandoning the novel she wrote
of herself that she was turning "every
wrong colour" and living "chiefly on the
sofa".[122] She put down her pen on
18 March 1817, making a note of it.[122]

Winchester Cathedral, where Austen is buried, and her memorial gravestone in the nave of the Cathedral

Austen made light of her condition,

describing it as "bile" and rheumatism. As
her illness progressed, she experienced
difficulty walking and lacked energy; by
mid-April she was confined to bed. In May,
Cassandra and Henry brought her to
Winchester for treatment, by which time
she suffered agonising pain and
welcomed death.[122] Austen died in
Winchester on 18 July 1817 at the age of
41. Henry, through his clerical connections,
arranged for his sister to be buried in the
north aisle of the nave of Winchester
Cathedral. The epitaph composed by her
brother James praises Austen's personal
qualities, expresses hope for her salvation
and mentions the "extraordinary
endowments of her mind", but does not
explicitly mention her achievements as a
writer.[125]

Posthumous publication
In the months after Austen's death in July
1817, Cassandra, Henry Austen and
Murray arranged for the publication of
Persuasion and Northanger Abbey as a
set.[n] Henry Austen contributed a
Biographical Note dated December 1817,
which for the first time identified his sister
as the author of the novels. Tomalin
describes it as "a loving and polished
eulogy".[127] Sales were good for a year—
only 321 copies remained unsold at the
end of 1818.[128]
Although Austen's six novels were out of
print in England in the 1820s, they were
still being read through copies housed in
private libraries and circulating libraries.
Austen had early admirers. The first piece
of fiction using her as a character (what
might now be called real person fiction)
appeared in 1823 in a letter to the editor in
The Lady's Magazine.[129] It refers to
Austen's genius and suggests that aspiring
authors were envious of her powers.[130]

In 1832, Richard Bentley purchased the

remaining copyrights to all of her novels,
and over the following winter published
five illustrated volumes as part of his
Standard Novels series. In October 1833,
Bentley released the first collected edition
of her works. Since then, Austen's novels
have been continuously in print.[131]

Genre and style

Austen's works implicitly critique the
sentimental novels of the second half of
the 18th century and are part of the
transition to 19th-century literary
realism.[132][o] The earliest English
novelists, Richardson, Henry Fielding and
Tobias Smollett, were followed by the
school of sentimentalists and romantics
such as Walter Scott, Horace Walpole,
Clara Reeve, Ann Radcliffe, and Oliver
Goldsmith, whose style and genre Austen
repudiated, returning the novel on a
"slender thread" to the tradition of
Richardson and Fielding for a "realistic
study of manners".[133] In the mid-20th
century, literary critics F. R. Leavis and Ian
Watt placed her in the tradition of
Richardson and Fielding; both believe that
she used their tradition of "irony, realism
and satire to form an author superior to
both".[134]

Walter Scott noted Austen's "resistance to

the trashy sensationalism of much of
modern fiction—'the ephemeral
productions which supply the regular
demand of watering places and circulating
libraries'".[135] Yet her relationship with
these genres is complex, as evidenced by
Northanger Abbey and Emma.[135] Similar
to William Wordsworth, who excoriated the
modern frantic novel in the "Preface" to his
Lyrical Ballads (1800), Austen distances
herself from escapist novels; the discipline
and innovation she demonstrates is
similar to his, and she shows "that
rhetorically less is artistically more."[135]
She eschewed popular Gothic fiction,
stories of terror in which a heroine
typically was stranded in a remote
location, a castle or abbey (32 novels
between 1784 and 1818 contain the word
"abbey" in their title). Yet in Northanger
Abbey she alludes to the trope, with the
heroine, Catherine, anticipating a move to
a remote locale. Rather than full-scale
rejection or parody, Austen transforms the
genre, juxtaposing reality, with
descriptions of elegant rooms and modern
comforts, against the heroine's "novel-
fueled" desires.[136] Nor does she
completely denigrate Gothic fiction:
instead she transforms settings and
situations, such that the heroine is still
imprisoned, yet her imprisonment is
mundane and real—regulated manners
and the strict rules of the ballroom.[137] In
Sense and Sensibility Austen presents
characters who are more complex than in
staple sentimental fiction, according to
critic Keymer, who notes that although it is
a parody of popular sentimental fiction,
"Marianne in her sentimental histrionics
responds to the calculating world ... with a
quite justifiable scream of female
distress."[138]

Richardson's Pamela,
the prototype for the The hair

sentimental novel, is a was curled,

and the
didactic love story with
maid sent
a happy ending, written
away, and
at a time women were
Emma sat
beginning to have the
down to
right to choose think and
husbands and yet were be

restricted by social miserable.

It was a
conventions.[140] Austen
wretched
attempted Richardson's
business,
epistolary style, but
indeed!
found the flexibility of Such an
narrative more overthrow
conducive to her of
realism, a realism in everything
which each she had

conversation and been

wishing for!
gesture carries a weight
Such a
of significance. The
developme
narrative style utilises
nt of every
free indirect speech—
she was the first English thing most
novelist to do so unwelcome

extensively—through !

which she had the — example

ability to present a of free

indirect
character's thoughts
speech,
directly to the reader
Jane
and yet still retain
Austen,
narrative control. The
Emma[139]
style allows an author
to vary discourse
between the narrator's voice and values
and those of the characters.[141]

Austen had a natural ear for speech and

dialogue, according to scholar Mary
Lascelles: "Few novelists can be more
scrupulous than Jane Austen as to the
phrasing and thoughts of their
characters."[142] Techniques such as
fragmentary speech suggest a character's
traits and their tone; "syntax and phrasing
rather than vocabulary" is utilised to
indicate social variants.[143] Dialogue
reveals a character's mood—frustration,
anger, happiness—each treated differently
and often through varying patterns of
sentence structures. When Elizabeth
Bennet rejects Darcy, her stilted speech
and the convoluted sentence structure
reveals that he has wounded her:[144]
From the very beginning, from
the first moment I may almost
say, of my acquaintance with
you, your manners impressing
me with the fullest belief of your
arrogance, your conceit, and
your selfish disdain of the
feelings of others, were such as
to form that the groundwork of
disapprobation, on which
succeeding events have built so
immovable a dislike. And I had
not known you a month before I
felt that you were the last man
 in the world whom I could ever
be prevailed on to marry.[145]

Austen's plots highlight women's

traditional dependence on marriage to
secure social standing and economic
security.[146] As an art form, the 18th-
century novel lacked the seriousness of its
equivalents from the 19th century, when
novels were treated as "the natural vehicle
for discussion and ventilation of what
mattered in life".[147] Rather than delving
too deeply into the psyche of her
characters, Austen enjoys them and
imbues them with humour, according to
critic John Bayley. He believes that the
well-spring of her wit and irony is her own
attitude that comedy "is the saving grace
of life".[148] Part of Austen's fame rests on
the historical and literary significance that
she was the first woman to write great
comic novels. Samuel Johnson's influence
is evident, in that she follows his advice to
write "a representation of life as may
excite mirth".[149]

Her humour comes from her modesty and

lack of superiority, allowing her most
successful characters, such as Elizabeth
Bennet, to transcend the trivialities of life,
which the more foolish characters are
overly absorbed in.[148] Austen used
comedy to explore the individualism of
women's lives and gender relations, and
she appears to have used it to find the
goodness in life, often fusing it with
"ethical sensibility", creating artistic
tension. Critic Robert Polhemus writes, "To
appreciate the drama and achievement of
Austen, we need to realize how deep was
her passion for both reverence and
ridicule ... and her comic imagination
reveals both the harmonies and the telling
contradictions of her mind and vision as
she tries to reconcile her satirical bias with
her sense of the good."[149]
Reception

Contemporaneous responses

In 1816 the editors of The New Monthly

Magazine noted Emma 's publication, but
chose not to review it.[K]

As Austen's works were published

anonymously, they brought her little
personal renown. They were fashionable
among opinion-makers, but were rarely
reviewed.[105] Most of the reviews were
short and on balance favourable, although
superficial and cautious,[150][151] most
often focused on the moral lessons of the
novels.[152]

Sir Walter Scott, a leading novelist of the

day, anonymously wrote a review of Emma
in 1815, using it to defend the then-
disreputable genre of the novel and
praising Austen's realism, "the art of
copying from nature as she really exists in
the common walks of life, and presenting
to the reader, instead of the splendid
scenes from an imaginary world, a correct
and striking representation of that which is
daily taking place around him".[153] The
other important early review was
attributed to Richard Whately in 1821.
However, Whately denied having authored
the review, which drew favourable
comparisons between Austen and such
acknowledged greats as Homer and
Shakespeare, and praised the dramatic
qualities of her narrative. Scott and
Whately set the tone for almost all
subsequent 19th-century Austen
criticism.[154]
19th century

One of the first two published

illustrations of Pride and
Prejudice, from the Richard
Bentley edition.[155] Caption
reads: "She then told him [Mr
Bennett] what Mr Darcy had
voluntarily done for Lydia. He
heard her with astonishment."

Because Austen's novels did not conform

to Romantic and Victorian expectations
that "powerful emotion [be] authenticated
by an egregious display of sound and
colour in the writing",[156] 19th-century
critics and audiences preferred the works
of Charles Dickens and George Eliot.[157]
Notwithstanding Walter Scott's positivity,
Austen's work did not match the prevailing
aesthetic values of the Romantic
zeitgeist.[158] Her novels were republished
in Britain from the 1830s and sold steadily,
but they were not best-sellers.[159]

The first French critic who paid notice to

Austen was Philarète Chasles in an 1842
essay, dismissing her in two sentences as
a boring, imitative writer with no
substance.[160] Austen was almost
completely ignored in France until
1878,[160] when the French critic Léon
Boucher published the essay Le Roman
Classique en Angleterre, in which he called
Austen a "genius", the first French author
to do so.[161] The first accurate translation
of Austen into French occurred in 1899
when Félix Fénéon translated Northanger
Abbey as Catherine Moreland.[161]

In Britain, Austen gradually grew in the

estimation of the literati. Philosopher and
literary critic George Henry Lewes
published a series of enthusiastic articles
in the 1840s and 1850s.[162] Later in the
century, novelist Henry James referred to
Austen several times with approval, and on
one occasion ranked her with
Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Henry
Fielding as among "the fine painters of
life".[163]

The publication of James Edward Austen-

Leigh's A Memoir of Jane Austen in 1869
introduced Austen to a wider public as
"dear aunt Jane", the respectable maiden
aunt. Publication of the Memoir spurred
the reissue of Austen's novels—the first
popular editions were released in 1883
and fancy illustrated editions and
collectors' sets quickly followed.[164]
Author and critic Leslie Stephen described
the popular mania that started to develop
for Austen in the 1880s as "Austenolatry".
Around the start of the 20th century, an
intellectual clique of Janeites reacted
against the popularisation of Austen,
distinguishing their deeper appreciation
from the vulgar enthusiasm of the
masses.

In response, Henry James decried "a

beguiled infatuation" with Austen, a rising
tide of public interest that exceeded
Austen's "intrinsic merit and interest".[165]
The American literary critic A. Walton Litz
noted that the "anti-Janites" in the 19th
and 20th centuries comprised a
formidable literary squad of Mark Twain,
Henry James, Charlotte Brontë, D. H.
Lawrence and Kingsley Amis, but in "every
case the adverse judgement merely
reveals the special limitations or
eccentricities of the critic, leaving Jane
Austen relatively untouched".[166]
Modern

Depiction of Austen from A Memoir of

Jane Austen (1871) written by her
nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh,
and based on the sketch by
Cassandra. All subsequent portraits
of Austen are generally based on this,
including on the reverse of the Bank
of England £10 note introduced in
September 2017.

Austen's works have attracted legions of

scholars. The first dissertation on Austen
was published in 1883, by George Pellew, a
student at Harvard University.[167] Another
early academic analysis came from a 1911
essay by Oxford Shakespearean scholar A.
C. Bradley,[168] who grouped Austen's
novels into "early" and "late" works, a
distinction still used by scholars today.[169]
The first academic book devoted to
Austen in France was Jane Austen by Paul
and Kate Rague (1914), who set out to
explain why French critics and readers
should take Austen seriously.[161] The
same year, Léonie Villard published Jane
Austen, Sa Vie et Ses Oeuvres, originally her
PhD thesis, the first serious academic
study of Austen in France.[161] In 1923,
R.W. Chapman published the first scholarly
edition of Austen's collected works, which
was also the first scholarly edition of any
English novelist. The Chapman text has
remained the basis for all subsequent
published editions of Austen's works.[170]

With the publication in 1939 of Mary

Lascelles' Jane Austen and Her Art, the
academic study of Austen took hold.[171]
Lascelles analyzed the books Austen read
and their influence on her work, and
closely examined Austen's style and
"narrative art". Concern arose that
academics were obscuring the
appreciation of Austen with increasingly
esoteric theories, a debate that has
continued since.[172]
The period since World War II has seen a
diversity of critical approaches to Austen,
including feminist theory, and perhaps
most controversially, postcolonial
theory.[173] The divide has widened
between the popular appreciation of
Austen, particularly by modern Janeites,
and academic judgements.[174] In 1994,
literary critic Harold Bloom placed Austen
among the greatest Western writers of all
time.[175]

In the People's Republic of China after

1949, writings of Austen were regarded as
too frivolous,[176] and thus during the
Chinese Cultural Revolution of 1966–69,
Austen was banned as a "British bourgeois
imperialist".[177] In the late 1970s, when
Austen's works was re-published in China,
her popularity with readers confounded
the authorities who had trouble
understanding that people generally read
books for enjoyment, not political
edification.[178]

In a typical modern debate, the

conservative American professor Gene
Koppel, to the indignation of his liberal
literature students, mentioned that Austen
and her family were "Tories of the deepest
dye", i.e. Conservatives in opposition to the
liberal Whigs. Although several feminist
authors such as Claudia Johnson and
Mollie Sandock claimed Austen for their
own cause, Koppel argued that different
people react to a work of literature in
different subjective ways, as explained by
the philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer.
Thus competing interpretations of
Austen's work can be equally valid,
provided they are grounded in textual and
historical analysis: it is equally possible to
see Austen as a feminist critiquing
Regency-era society and as a conservative
upholding its values.[179]
Adaptations

Austen's novels have resulted in sequels,

prequels and adaptations of almost every
type, from soft-core pornography to
fantasy. From the 19th century, her family
members published conclusions to her
incomplete novels, and by 2000 there were
over 100 printed adaptations.[180] The first
dramatic adaptation of Austen was
published in 1895, Rosina Filippi's
Duologues and Scenes from the Novels of
Jane Austen: Arranged and Adapted for
Drawing-Room Performance, and Filippi
was also responsible for the first
professional stage adaptation, The
Bennets (1901).[181] The first film
adaptation was the 1940 MGM production
of Pride and Prejudice starring Laurence
Olivier and Greer Garson.[182] BBC
television dramatisations since the 1970s
have attempted to adhere meticulously to
Austen's plots, characterisations and
settings.[183] The British critic Robert Irvine
noted that in American film adaptations of
Austen's novels, starting with the 1940
version of Pride and Prejudice, class is
subtly downplayed, and the society of
Regency England depicted by Austen that
is grounded in a hierarchy based upon the
ownership of land and the antiquity of the
family name is one that Americans cannot
embrace in its entirety.[184]

From 1995, many Austen adaptations

appeared, with Ang Lee's film of Sense and
Sensibility, for which screenwriter and star
Emma Thompson won an Academy
Award, and the BBC's immensely popular
TV mini-series Pride and Prejudice, starring
Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth.[185] A 2005
British production of Pride and Prejudice,
directed by Joe Wright and starring Keira
Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen,[186]
was followed in 2007 by ITV's Mansfield
Park, Northanger Abbey and
Persuasion,[187] and in 2016 by Love &
Friendship starring Kate Beckinsale as
Lady Susan, a film version of Lady Susan,
that borrowed the title of Austen's Love
and Freindship [sic].[188]

Honours

Austen commemoration on
the wall of Poets' Corner in
Westminster Abbey, London

In 2013, Austen's works featured on a

series of UK postage stamps issued by the
Royal Mail to mark the bicentenary of the
publication of Pride and Prejudice.[189]
Austen is on the £10 note issued by the
Bank of England which was introduced in
2017, replacing Charles Darwin.[190][191] In
July 2017, a statue of Jane Austen was
erected in Basingstoke, Hampshire on the
200th anniversary of her death.[192]

List of works
Novels
Sense and Sensibility (1811)
Pride and Prejudice (1813)
Mansfield Park (1814)
Emma (1816)
Northanger Abbey (1818, posthumous)
Persuasion (1818, posthumous)
Lady Susan (1871, posthumous)
Unfinished fiction
The Watsons (1804)
Sanditon (1817)
Other works
Sir Charles Grandison (adapted play)
(1793, 1800)[p]
Plan of a Novel (1815)
Poems (1796–1817)
Prayers (1796–1817)
Letters (1796–1817)
Juvenilia—Volume Juvenilia—Volume
the First (1787– the Second (1787–
1793)[q] 1793)

Frederic & Elfrida Love and

Jack & Alice Freindship [sic]

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Notes
a. The original is unsigned but was believed
by the family to have been made by
Austen's sister Cassandra and remained in
the family until 1920 with a signed sketch
by Cassandra. The original sketch,
according to relatives who knew Jane
Austen well, was not a good likeness.[1]
b. Oliver MacDonagh says that Sense and
Sensibility "may well be the first English
realistic novel" based on its detailed and
accurate portrayal of what he calls "getting
and spending" in an English gentry family.[3]
c. Irene Collins estimates that when George
Austen took up his duties as rector in 1764,
Steventon comprised no more than about
thirty families.[12]
d. Philadelphia had returned from India in
1765 and taken up residence in London;
when her husband returned to India to
replenish their income, she stayed in
England. He died in India in 1775, with
Philadelphia unaware until the news
reached her a year later, fortuitously as
George and Cassandra were visiting. See Le
Faye, 29–36
e. For social conventions among the gentry
generally, see Collins (1994), 105
f. Doody agrees with Tomalin; see Doody,
"Jane Austen, that disconcerting child", in
Alexander and McMaster 2005, 105.
g. Elinor Dashwood's original quote from
chapter 29, page 159, of Sense and
Sensibility is: "the worst and most
irremediable of all evils, a connection, for
life, with an unprincipled man."
h. Austen's observations of early Worthing
probably helped inspire her final, but
unfinished novel, Sanditon, the story of an
up-and-coming seaside resort in Sussex.
i. Chawton had a population of 417 at the
census of 1811.[98]
j. The Prince Regent's admiration was by no
means reciprocated. In a letter of 16
February 1813 to her friend Martha Lloyd,
Austen says (referring to the Prince's wife,
whom he treated notoriously badly) "I hate
her Husband".[112]
k. John Murray also published the work of
Walter Scott and Lord Byron. In a letter to
Cassandra dated 17/18 October 1816,
Austen comments that "Mr. Murray's Letter
is come; he is a Rogue of course, but a civil
one."[116]
l. Claire Tomalin prefers a diagnosis of a
lymphoma such as Hodgkin's disease.[121]
m. The manuscript of the revised final
chapters of Persuasion is the only surviving
manuscript for any of her published novels
in her own handwriting.[123] Cassandra and
Henry Austen chose the final titles and the
title page is dated 1818.
n. Honan points to "the odd fact that most of
[Austen's] reviewers sound like Mr. Collins"
as evidence that contemporary critics felt
that works oriented toward the interests
and concerns of women were intrinsically
less important and less worthy of critical
notice than works (mostly non-fiction)
oriented towards men.[126]
o. Oliver MacDonagh says that Sense and
Sensibility "may well be the first English
realistic novel" based on its detailed and
accurate portrayal of what he calls "getting
and spending" in an English gentry family.[3]
p. The full title of this short play is Sir Charles
Grandison or The happy Man, a Comedy in
6 acts. For more information see Southam
(1986), 187–189.
 q. This list of the juvenilia is taken from The
Works of Jane Austen. Vol VI. 1954. Ed.
R.W. Chapman and B.C. Southam. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1988, as
supplemented by additional research
reflected in Margaret Anne Doody and
Douglas Murray, eds. Catharine and Other
Writings. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1993.

References
1. Kirkham (2005), 68–72.
2. Grundy (2014), 195–197
3. MacDonagh (1991), 65, 136–137.
4. Fergus (2005), 3–4
5. Le Faye (2005), 33
 6. Nokes (1998), 1
7. Nokes (1998), 1–2; Fergus (2005), 3–4
8. Nokes (1998), 2–4; Fergus (2005), 3–4; Le
Faye (2004), 279
9. Le Faye (2004), 27
10. Le Faye (2004), 20
11. Todd (2015), 2
12. Collins (1994), 86
13. "Philadelphia Austen Hancock: Eliza de
Feuillide's Mother" (https://www.geriwalton.
com/philadelphia-austen-hancock-eliza-de-f
euillides-mother/) . Geri Walton. 21 October
2019. Retrieved 22 May 2022.
14. Foster, Joseph (1888–1892). "Austen,
George (1)" (https://en.wikisource.org/wik
i/Alumni_Oxonienses:_the_Members_of_the
_University_of_Oxford,_1715-1886/Austen,_
George_(1)) . Alumni Oxonienses: the
Members of the University of Oxford, 1715–
1886. Oxford: Parker and Co – via
Wikisource.
15. Le Faye (2004), 3–5, 11
16. "STONELEIGH ABBEY, Ashow - 1000377 |
Historic England" (https://historicengland.o
rg.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1000377) .
historicengland.org.uk. Retrieved
26 November 2023.
17. "Stoneleigh Abbey: A Setting to Inspire Jane
Austen for Her Novels" (https://scskillman.
com/2018/09/18/stoneleigh-abbey-a-settin
g-to-inspire-jane-austen-for-her-novels/) .
18 September 2018. Retrieved
26 November 2023.
18. janelark (16 September 2012). "Jane
Austen's family history at Stoneleigh Abbey"
(https://janelark.blog/2012/09/16/jane-aus
tens-family-history-at-stoneleigh-abbey/) .
Author, Jane Lark's stories. Retrieved
26 November 2023.
19. Le Faye (2004), 8; Nokes (1998), 51
20. Le Faye (2004), 11
21. Le Faye (2004), 6
22. Le Faye (2004), 11; Nokes (1998), 24, 26
23. Le Faye (2004), 12; Nokes (1998), 24
24. Le Faye (2004), 11, 18, 19; Nokes (1998), 36
25. Le Faye (2004), 19
26. Nokes (1998), 37; Le Faye (2004), 25
27. Le Faye (2004), 22
28. Nokes (1998), 37; Le Faye (2004), 24–27
29. Honan (1987), 211–212
30. Todd (2015), 4
31. Nokes (1998), 39; Le Faye (2004), 22–23
32. Le Faye (2004), 29
33. Le Faye (2004), 46
34. Le Faye (2004), 26
35. Honan (1987), 14, 17–18; Collins (1994),
54.
36. Irvine (2005) p.2
37. Lane (1995), 1.
38. Tomalin (1997), 101–103, 120–123, 144;
Honan (1987), 119.
39. Quoted in Tomalin (1997), 102; see also
Honan (1987), 84
40. Le Faye (2004), 47–49; Collins (1994), 35,
133.
41. Todd (2015), 3
42. Tomalin (1997), 9–10, 26, 33–38, 42–43; Le
Faye (2004), 52; Collins (1994), 133–134
43. Le Faye (2004), 52
44. Grundy (2014), 192–193; Tomalin (1997),
28–29, 33–43, 66–67; Honan (1987), 31–
34; Lascelles (1966), 7–8
45. Collins (1994), 42
46. Honan (1987), 66–68; Collins (1994), 43
47. Le Faye (2014), xvi–xvii; Tucker (1986), 1–
2; Byrne (2002), 1–39; Gay (2002), ix, 1;
Tomalin (1997), 31–32, 40–42, 55–57, 62–
63; Honan (1987), 35, 47–52, 423–424, n.
20.
48. Honan (1987), 53–54; Lascelles (1966),
106–107; Litz (1965), 14–17.
49. Tucker (1986), 2
50. Le Faye (2004), 66; Litz (1986), 48; Honan
(1987), 61–62, 70; Lascelles (1966), 4; Todd
(2015), 4
51. Todd (2015), 4–5
52. "Jane Austen's juvenilia" (https://www.bl.u
k/romantics-and-victorians/articles/jane-au
stens-juvenilia) . British Library. Retrieved
26 August 2020.
53. Southam (1986), 244
54. Jenkyns (2004), 31
55. Todd (2015), 5; Southam (1986), 252
56. Litz (1965), 21; Tomalin (1997), 47; Honan
(1987), 73–74; Southam (1986), 248–249
57. Honan (1987), 75
58. Honan (1987), 93
59. Todd (2015), 5; Southam (1986), 245, 253
60. Southam (1986), 187–189
61. Austen-Leigh, William; Austen-Leigh,
Richard Arthur; Le Faye, Dierdre (1993).
Jane Austen: A Family History. London: The
British Library. pp. 76–77. ISBN 978-0-7123-
0312-5.
62. Sutherland (2005), 14; Doody (2014) 87–89
63. Honan (1987), 101–102; Tomalin (1997),
82–83
64. Tomalin (1997), 83–84; see also Sutherland
(2005), 15
65. Tomalin (1997), 118.
66. Quoted in Le Faye (2004), 92.
67. Halperin (1985), 721
68. Le Faye (2014), xviii; Fergus (2005), 7–8;
Tomalin (1997), 112–120, 159; Honan
(1987), 105–111.
69. Halperin (1985), 722
70. Sutherland (2005), 16–18; LeFaye (2014),
xviii; Tomalin (1997), 107, 120, 154, 208.
71. Le Faye (2004), 100, 114.
72. Le Faye (2004), 104; Sutherland (2005), 17,
21; quotations from Tomalin (1997), 120–
122.
73. Le Faye (2014), xviii–xiv; Fergus (2005), 7;
Sutherland (2005), 16–18, 21; Tomalin
(1997), 120–121; Honan (1987), 122–124.
74. King, Noel "Jane Austen in France"
Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Vol. 8, No. 1,
June 1953 p. 2.
75. Litz (1965), 59–60.
76. Tomalin (1997), 182.
77. Le Faye (2014), xx–xxi, xxvi; Fergus (2005),
8–9; Sutherland (2005), 16, 18–19, 20–22;
Tomalin (1997), 199, 254.
78. hubbard, susan. "Bath" (https://web.archive.
org/web/20190616014458/http://www.see
kingjaneausten.com/bath.html) .
seekingjaneausten.com. Archived from the
original (http://www.seekingjaneausten.co
m/bath.html) on 16 June 2019. Retrieved
27 May 2017.
79. Collins (1994), 8–9.
80. Sutherland (2005), 21.
81. Le Faye (2014) xx–xxii; Fergus (2005), 8;
Sutherland (2005), 15, 20–22; Tomalin
(1997), 168–175; Honan (1987), 215.
82. Irvine, 2005 4.
83. Irvine, 2005 3.
84. "Godmersham, Jane Austen's second
home" (https://www.pressreader.com/uk/k
entish-express-ashford-district/20130606/2
82278137880255) . Press Reader.
Retrieved 31 August 2020.
85. Halperin (1985), 729
86. Le Faye (2014), xxi; Fergus (2005), 7–8;
Tomalin (1997), 178–181; Honan (1987),
189–198.
87. Le Faye (2005), 51.
88. Irvine (2005), 3
89. Letter dated 18–20 November 1814, in Le
Faye (1995), 278–282.
90. Halperin (1985), 732
91. Kirkham (2005), 68–72; Auerbach (2004),
19.
92. Sutherland (2005), 15, 21.
93. Le Faye (2014) xxii; Tomalin (1997), 182–
184; Honan (1987), 203–205.
94. Honan (1987), 213–214.
95. Tomalin (1997), 194–206.
96. Tomalin (1997), 207.
97. Le Faye (2014), xx–xxi, xxvi; Fergus (2005),
8–9; Sutherland (2005), 16, 18–19, 20–22;
Tomalin (1997), 182, 199, 254.
98. Collins (1994), 89.
99. Le Faye (2014), xxii; Tomalin (1997), 194–
206; Honan (1987), 237–245; MacDonagh
(1991), 49.
100. Grey, J. David; Litz, A. Waton; Southam, B.
C.; Bok, H.Abigail (1986). The Jane Austen
companion (https://archive.org/details/jane
austencompan00grey) . Macmillan. p. 38 (h
ttps://archive.org/details/janeaustencompa
n00grey/page/38) . ISBN 9780025455405.
101. Irvine, 2005 15.
102. Irvine, 2005 10–15.
103. Fergus (2014), 6; Raven (2005), 198; Honan
(1987), 285–286.
104. Irvine, 2005 13.
105. Honan (1987), 289–290.
106. For more information and a discussion of
the economics of book publishing during
this period, see Fergus (2014), 6–7, and
Raven (2005), 196–203.
107. Irvine (2005) p.15
108. Honan (1987), 290, Tomalin (1997), 218.
109. Sutherland (2005), 16–17, 21; Le Faye
(2014) xxii–xxiii; Fergus (2014), 10–11;
Tomalin (1997), 210–212, 216–220; Honan
(1987), 287.
110. Le Faye (2014), xxiii; Fergus (1997), 22–24;
Sutherland (2005), 18–19; Tomalin (1997),
236, 240–241, 315, n. 5.
111. King, Noel J. (1953). "Jane Austen in
France". Nineteenth-Century Fiction. 8 (1):
1–26. doi:10.2307/3044273 (https://doi.or
g/10.2307%2F3044273) . JSTOR 3044273
(https://www.jstor.org/stable/3044273) .
112. Le Faye (1995), 207–208.
113. Austen letter to James Stannier Clarke, 15
November 1815; Clarke letter to Austen, 16
November 1815; Austen letter to John
Murray, 23 November 1815, in Le Faye
(1995), 296–298.
114. Halperin (1985), 734
115. Litz (1965), 164–165; Honan (1987), 367–
369, describes the episode in detail.
116. Honan (1987), 364–365; Le Faye (1995)
291.
117. Le Faye (2014), xxv–xxvi; Sutherland
(2005), 16–21; Fergus (2014), 12–13, 16–
17, n.29, 31, n.33; Fergus (2005), 10;
Tomalin (1997), 256.
118. Le Faye (2014), xx, xxvi; Fergus (2014), 15;
Tomalin (1997), 252–254.
119. Honan (1987), 378–379, 385–395
120. For detailed information concerning the
retrospective diagnosis, its uncertainties
and related controversies, see Honan
(1987), 391–392; Le Faye (2004), 236; Grey
(1986), 282; Wiltshire, Jane Austen and the
Body, 221.
121. Tomalin (1997), Appendix I, 283–284; see
also A. Upfal, "Jane Austen's lifelong health
problems and final illness: New evidence
points to a fatal Hodgkin's disease and
excludes the widely accepted Addison's" (ht
tp://mh.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/31/1/3) ,
Medical Humanities, 31(1),| 2005, 3–11.
doi:10.1136/jmh.2004.000193 (https://doi.
org/10.1136%2Fjmh.2004.000193)
122. Todd (2015), 13
123. Tomalin (1997), 255.
124. Tomalin (1997), 261.
125. Le Faye (2014), xxv–xxvi; Fergus (1997),
26–27; Tomalin (1997), 254–271; Honan
(1987), 385–405.
126. Honan (1987), 317.
127. Tomalin (1997), 272.
128. Tomalin (1997), 321, n.1 and 3; Gilson
(1986), 136–137.
129. Looser, Devoney (13 December 2019). "Fan
fiction or fan fact? An unknown pen portrait
of Jane Austen" (https://www.the-tls.co.uk/
articles/fan-fiction-or-fan-fact/) . TLS: 14–
15.
130. Looser, Devoney (13 December 2019).
"Genius expressed in the nose The earliest
known piece of Jane Austen-inspired fan
fiction" (https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/
genius-expressed-in-the-nose/) . TLS.
131. Gilson (1986), 137; Gilson (2005), 127;
Southam (1986), 102.
132. Litz (1965), 3–14; Grundy (2014), 195–197;
Waldron (2005), 83, 89–90; Duffy (1986),
93–94.
133. Grundy (2014), 196
134. Todd (2015), 21
135. Keymer (2014), 21
136. Keymer (2014), 24–25
137. Keymer (2014), 29
138. Keymer (2014), 32
139. qtd. in Lodge (1986), 175
140. Lodge (1986), 165
141. Lodge (1986), 171–175
142. Lascelles (1966) 101
143. Lascelles (1966), 96, 101
144. Baker (2014), 177
145. qtd in Baker (2014), 177
146. MacDonagh (1991), 66–75; Collins (1994),
160–161.
147. Bayley (1986), 24
148. Bayley (1986), 25–26
149. Polhemus (1986), 60
150. Fergus (2014), 10; Honan (1987), 287–289,
316–317, 372–373.
151. Southam (1968), 1.
152. Waldron (2005), 83–91.
153. Scott (1968), 58; Waldron (2005), 86; Duffy
(1986), 94–96.
154. Waldron (2005), 89–90; Duffy (1986), 97;
Watt (1963), 4–5.
155. Gilson (2005), 127.
156. Duffy (1986), 98–99; MacDonagh (1991),
146; Watt (1963), 3–4.
157. Southam (1968), 1; Southam (1987), 2.
158. Litz, A. Walton "Recollecting Jane Austen"
pp. 669–682 from Critical Inquiry, Vol. 1,
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159. Johnson (2014), 232; Gilson (2005), 127.
160. King, Noel "Jane Austen in France" from
Nineteenth-Century Fiction pp. 1–28, Vol. 8,
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161. King, Noel "Jane Austen in France" from
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162. Southam (1968), 152; Southam (1987), 20–
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163. Southam (1987), 70.
164. Southam (1987), 58–62.
165. Southam (1987), 46–47, 230 (for the quote
from James); Johnson (2014), 234.
166. Litz, A. Walton "Recollecting Jane Austen"
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167. Devoney Looser, The Making of Jane
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168. Trott (2005), 92.
169. Southam (1987), 79.
170. Southam (1987), 99–100; see also Watt
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171. Southam (1987), 107–109, 124.
172. Southam (1986), 108; Watt (1963), 10–11;
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177. Zhu Hong "Nineteenth-Century British
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178. Zhu Hong "Nineteenth-Century British
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179. Koppel, Gene (2 November 1989). "Pride
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181. Devoney Looser, The Making of Jane
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182. Brownstein (2001), 13.
183. Troost (2007), 79.
184. Irvine, Robert Jane Austen, London:
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185. Troost (2007), 82–84.
186. Carol Kopp, "The Nominees: Keira
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Further reading
Gubar, Susan and Sandra Gilbert. The
Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer
and the Nineteenth Century Literary
Imagination. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1984 [1979]. ISBN 0-300-02596-3.

External links
Works by Jane Austen (htt
Jane Austen
ps://www.gutenberg.org/e at Wikipedia's
books/author/68) at sister projects
Project Gutenberg
Media from
Works by or about Jane Commons
Austen (https://archive.or Quotations
g/search.php?query=%2 from
Wikiquote
8%28subject%3A%22Aust
en%2C%20Jane%22%20O Texts from
Wikisource
R%20subject%3A%22Jan
Data from
e%20Austen%22%20OR% Wikidata
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22%29%20OR%20%28%221775-1817%22%2
0AND%20Austen%29%29%20AND%20%28-m
ediatype:software%29) at Internet Archive
Works by Jane Austen (https://librivox.org/au
thor/155) at LibriVox (public domain
audiobooks)
 Jane Austen's Fiction Manuscripts Digital
Edition (http://www.janeausten.ac.uk/index.h
tml) , a digital archive from the University of
Oxford
A Memoir of Jane Austen (https://www.guten
berg.org/ebooks/17797) by James Edward
Austen-Leigh
Jane Austen (http://www.bl.uk/people/jane-a
usten) at the British Library

Museums

Jane Austen's House Museum (http://www.ja

ne-austens-house-museum.org.uk/) in
Chawton
The Jane Austen Centre (http://www.janeaus
ten.co.uk) in Bath
Fan sites and societies

The Republic of Pemberley (http://www.pem

berley.com)
The Jane Austen Society of Australia (http
s://web.archive.org/web/20051124033438/h
ttp://www.jasa.net.au/index.html)
The Jane Austen Society of North America (h
ttp://www.jasna.org)
The Jane Austen Society of the United
Kingdom (http://www.janeaustensociety.org.
uk/)

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